HUDDERSFIELD MP Barry Sheerman says lowering the voting age could
reduce childhood and put teens at risk of sexual predators.

The veteran MP warned against allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote
in the EU referendum as he claimed the policy "shrinks
childhood" and would result in adulthood beginning at 16 rather
than 18.

But his comments about young people's "vulnerability to
sexual predators" sparked disagreement in a House of Commons
debate.

He told the Commons many of the protections afforded to children
through to 18 "would be destroyed" by the change proposed by
the SNP and his own Labour Party.

But after the debate, the move to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to have
a vote in the EU referendum was rejected by 310 votes to 265.

Mr Sheerman, speaking during the European Union Referendum Bill
committee stage, told shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden: "I find
this very awkward as I nearly always agree with you on most things, but
on this one, isn't what's missing out of this the
responsibility we have as Parliamentarians to care for young people who
are very vulnerable? "Up and down this country we've had
vulnerability to sexual predators and ghastly things happening right
through to 18 and this move to have adults at 16 will make a lot of
young men and women more vulnerable to sexual predation than that
happens at the moment."

Mr McFadden replied: "I have a huge mutual respect for you but
I do not see the connection between extending voting rights to people at
16 and making them more vulnerable to sexual predators."

Mr Sheerman later added: "What those of us - the small
minority of us on these benches I have to say - worry about is the truth
is we make becoming an adult 16 and that shrinks childhood.

"At a time when kids in this country are going to live to 100
the amount of time they're going to be children gets smaller as a
percentage.

"There are arguments for or against certain things happening
at 16 and 18, but the truth is that we will by this amendment, if it
became law, mean that young people become adults at 16."

Mr McFadden said Mr Sheerman had made his point on shrinking
childhood before, adding: "All I would say to you is maturity is
not an exact science."